Swarms and Mobs at This Year's ETech(2 tags)Individually, Eric Bonabeau's keynote on Biological Computing and Howard Rheingold's address on Smart Mobs would have been interesting. Taken together you can see the application of emergent behavior described by Bonabeau to the technological challenges issued by Rheingold. And that's what makes conferences like ETech so powerful. Here's a look at what exceeds the sum of its parts with these two keynotes.

Steven Johnson on "Emergence"(2 tags)What do ant colonies, Sim City, and the neighborhoods of Florence have in common with emergent software development and intelligent networks? Steven Johnson talks with O'Reilly Network about the common threads of emergent systems.

Swarm Intelligence: An Interview with Eric Bonabeau(2 tags)The concept of swarm intelligence is borrowed from nature, and in this interview with Eric Bonabeau, that's where the conversation begins--with ants and other social insects. Dr. Bonabeau takes us from his childhood nightmares of carnivorous wasps to applying the theories of swarm intelligence to solving real problems in the business world.